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I mentioned this to my spouse and she told me she had a faulty memory regarding the show 'Sex And The City'which she though was Sex In The City'.

__________________I am 100% confident all psychics and mediums are frauds.
----------------------------------------------Proud woo denier
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“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” -Christopher Hitchens-

All right, so if we want to give a name to this specific type of cognition error, we can. Now, on what basis can we conclude that it is increasing? Even if we can demonstrate unequivocally that it is increasing, the nest step would be to propose competing hypotheses to explain the increase. We're nowhere near lizard men of the matrix on this yet.

I think another thing that contributed to the Mandela Effect was a presumption about state leaders in the African continent. They are either there for life or imprisoned/murdered after a coup. Mandela voluntarily stepped down after his tenure to retire. His absence in SA politics post retirement lead people to assume that he had died.

Perhaps people remember the name Berenstein because it's more common than Berenstain, so the latter somehow doesn't look right. For decades I was convinced that the actress Miriam Margolyes' surname was Margoyles.

This. When I was in grade-school, there was as girl whose last name was Robertson. How exotic !!! The really pedestrian kids couldn't get past "Robinson" as in Swiss Family". Any name that is even slightly unusual will be gotten wrong frequently, with preference for the more common.

There are famous people who I thought had died, but later I found they were still alive.

Example, I thought that Kelsey Grammer had died in 2008, so of course was puzzled when he continued to appear in films.

I had a similar experience when Australian horseracing identity Bart Cummings died in 2015, a short while I thought I had heard his death announced a few years earlier. Some quick checking showed that I was confusing the death of actor Bill Hunter (2011) who had played Bart Cummings in his last film with the death of Bart Cummings.

Again, my realization that something was not quite right led me to double check what I was remembering, rather than jump to claiming that reality had changed around me.

Re the specific case of Mandela: perhaps people remember hearing about Stephen Biko. Like Mandela a big name in anti-apartheid activism, though with different organizations. He died from police brutality while in custody and had a big funeral attended by 1000's of people, including foreign diplomats.

Ten years after his death in 1977 the movie "Cry Freedom" about his life were made, starring Denzel Washington and focusing heavily on his death. I dimly remember news-spots on apartheid in the 80's that would mention Mandela's incarceration and also show pictures from Biko's funeral. An inattentive viewer could leave with the impression that it was Mandela who had died.

Re the specific case of Mandela: perhaps people remember hearing about Stephen Biko. Like Mandela a big name in anti-apartheid activism, though with different organizations. He died from police brutality while in custody and had a big funeral attended by 1000's of people, including foreign diplomats.

Ten years after his death in 1977 the movie "Cry Freedom" about his life were made, starring Denzel Washington and focusing heavily on his death. I dimly remember news-spots on apartheid in the 80's that would mention Mandela's incarceration and also show pictures from Biko's funeral. An inattentive viewer could leave with the impression that it was Mandela who had died.

Thanks for posting that, given what I and Marasmusine posted, it suggests a possible mechanism for how this got started.

Thanks for posting that, given what I and Marasmusine posted, it suggests a possible mechanism for how this got started.

I googled '"Mandela effect" Biko' and found that this mechanism has already occurred to plenty of rational people. And (surprise, surprise) that the true believers will not abandon their dreams of parallel universes and steadfastly reject that they could have been confused this way.

To me this "phenomena" seems very US-centric. The two most prominent cases are:
1) A US series of childrens books are spelled slightly different.
2) A charismatic foreign leader, who as president steered his country through a tumultuous transitive period, actually died long before he became president.
The proponents of the Mandela effect seem to honestly believe these two changes are of a similar level.

Mandela's early death would vastly impact the last 20 years of South African history. But all these people remember is that Mandela died in the 80's, then apparently never heard about him again (or South Africa) until he actually died in 2013.

I googled '"Mandela effect" Biko' and found that this mechanism has already occurred to plenty of rational people. And (surprise, surprise) that the true believers will not abandon their dreams of parallel universes and steadfastly reject that they could have been confused this way.

To me this "phenomena" seems very US-centric. The two most prominent cases are:
1) A US series of childrens books are spelled slightly different.
2) A charismatic foreign leader, who as president steered his country through a tumultuous transitive period, actually died long before he became president.
The proponents of the Mandela effect seem to honestly believe these two changes are of a similar level.

Mandela's early death would vastly impact the last 20 years of South African history. But all these people remember is that Mandela died in the 80's, then apparently never heard about him again (or South Africa) until he actually died in 2013.

It is the same with many conspiracy theories, they only make sense if the world stops at the continental borders of the United States. That said, I tried your suggested Google search and amongst the first entries was a New Ager with some really loopy claims, such as this:

Quote:

If we didn’t live in a holographic multiverse in which we’re all venturing in various directions to experience a multitude of different possible futures and pasts, we wouldn’t find the tremendous divergence between peoples’ memories. As we enter the Quantum Age, it’s time that we stop calling such differences in memory “false recollections,” in favor of “alternate recollections,” indicating respect for the fact that each and every one of us exists in a superimposed state, with access to many possible alternate histories, presents, and futures.

In reading several people’s experiences with the Mandela effect, I started to wonder; what is the desired response from people who didn’t experience it?

Suppose I remember that Mandela was president of South Africa, but most everyone around me remembers that he died in prison. Not only that, but everything around me (TV shows, newspaper articles, history lessons, you name it) supports that.

Obviously, I wouldn’t expect people to change their minds. I may remember that he was president, but if everything around me contradicts that, down to archival news broadcasts, then it would be folly to expect people to believe me instead.

If I didn’t think that my memory was wrong (for whatever reason), and I was unable to get back to the reality I came from (side-note; do people try that?), what would I do?

Well, I’d accept reality as I find it, and I don’t think I’d insist reality had changed. After all, what is more likely; that all of reality has changed, including everyone’s memories (excepting a small group), or that I am from a different reality altogether? (For the moment, let's exclude the actual answer; my memories were incorrect)

All this is to say that “But it used to be different” doesn’t carry any weight. It’s an interesting story, but you’ll need more to convince me that MY memories (and most everyone else’s, plus all video and print) are wrong instead of yours.

So, with that out of the way, my question is:

Ideally, how do they want people to respond to their experience?

I have considered asking them directly, but I have so little knowledge of that community that anything I'd say could be seen as condescending, thus depriving me of answers on principle (and rightly so, I think).

By the way, my memories regarding Mandela line up with reality, and the above was purely an example.

Some people remember things differently than everyone else, such as the supposed death of Nelson Mandela in the '80s, but also more trivial stuff such as the name of the Berenstain Bears (they remember it as being "Berenstein").

There are different explanations given, but the common thread is the idea that things were really that way for them, and that it isn't faulty memory.

I don't think there would be a "one size fits all" approach to all people.

There are plenty of people who realize that their memory may be faulty, or that their memory may be playing tricks on them. Those people would simply be convinced by showing them a wiki page, or media articles or broadcasts that show they're wrong. Though even then, of course, if somehow the stakes are high for them to hold to their previously held conviction, they may try to double down.

I don't dare to go into how other people could be convinced.

I'm more than a little skeptical about the namesake story of the effect. According to wiki:

Quote:

The term was coined by paranormal enthusiast Fiona Broome, who says she and other people remember Nelson Mandela dying in the 1980s, rather than in 2013.

Mandela, after his release from prison, led the ANC in the negotiations to abolish apartheid, became the first SA president, led the reconciliation process, and got the Nobel Peace Prize. His funeral in 2013 was attended by virtually every head of state, broadcast globally, and is also notable for the incident with the sign language interpreter. You must have been really living under a rock to not know any of that (or have gotten your news only from the National Enquirer).

We have no evidence for Ms. Broome's claim other than her say-so. Maybe she did indeed ask 50 people at DragonCon about it and 2 others had the same faulty memory. Confirmation bias at best, I suspect.

I'm not skeptical about the other prototypical example trotted around: the Berenstain Bears. I think it's totally believable that in shedloads of people, their memory "corrected" the really uncommon -stain spelling to the common -stein spelling, all independent of each other.

"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

I have to say I was confused by the OP. We had a thread about this a few years ago, and it was simply a discussion of mis-remembered(with certainty) items. I believe that my position was "hey, if you want to call it The Mandela Effect, have fun but it's been known for years and it's just normal human memory".

When did the lunatic fringe latch onto this? There's a bucketload of woo material on the inter toobz. Alternate reality, parallel universe, mind control plots, etc.... I may have heard the term in recent times and thought they were referring to the phenomenon of faulty memory.

__________________Ha! Foolmewunz has just been added to the list of people who aren't complete idiots. Hokulele

It's not that liberals have become less tolerant. It's that conservatives have become more intolerable.

I've encountered four people who "remember" that the opera singer, Luciano Pavarotti was responsible for the death of princess Diana. Are their memories correct for them?

__________________"At the Supreme Court level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections."
Justice William O. Douglas

I'm not so much interested in changing people's minds on the subject. If I do ever meet someone who believes it, I don't think I'd be confident enough to confront it anyway, and online discussions rarely change the mind of the person I'm conversing with. I'm more interested in the response they expect from people who haven't experienced it.

People who are convinced that the Mandela Effect is a real thing which they have experienced, tend to share these experiences among each other (partly out of fear of being mocked). Occasionally, someone shares it more publicly.

I want to know what they expect from 'the rest of us', so to speak.

Do they expect us to say "well, I guess Mandela really did die, but we all misremembered it"?

Do they expect us to believe that they're in the wrong reality, and they need to get back to their own?

Do they want us to hand over the conspirators who changed everything around them?

That's what I'm not clear on. How would they like us to react to it? What do they expect? (that's not a rhetorical question)

As I said, I could ask them directly, but I don't want to poke a hornet's nest just yet.

"Suggesting spurious explanations isn't relevant to my work." -- WTC Dust.
"Both cannot be simultaneously true, and so one may conclude neither is true, and if neither is true, then Apollo is fraudulent." -- Patrick1000.

Funny, I don't remember this thread being here this morning... I MUST HAVE SLIPPED INTO AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE!!!

Seriously, I've found that some of my own memories don't line up with facts. For many years, I had a distinct memory of hearing a particular song in 1977 (I could even picture it in my mind, that I'd heard it in an apartment I lived in at that time), only to recently find that the song was recorded in 1984. I also was certain for awhile that a former acquaintance had died in 1987 (again, I could picture in my mind where I was when I heard the news); only recently did I find that the person had actually died in 1992.

It seems to me that the Mandela Effect is a form of solipsism; one is so uncertain that they can trust the reality around them, that they prefer an outlandish explanation over accepting that their memory is wrong. One prefers what one "knows" over the facts, somewhat like religious belief.

__________________"Shemp, you are the one fixed point in an ever-changing universe." - Beady

Many people of my generation were certain they remembered seeing the Biggs Darklighter scenes in the first act of Star Wars in theaters in 1977. People could describe them in vivid detail. Yet those scenes had been deleted from the film before it was ever printed and shipped to theaters.

What they were actually recalling, as it turned out, were still frames and a narrative description of the scene in the Random House Story of Star Wars book, which was hugely popular.

Confabulation. Conformation bias. Invented memories. It's a thing.

__________________"I'm 'willing to admit' any fact that can be shown to be evidential and certain." -- Vortigern99

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." -- Jimi Hendrix

Yes, my "specific memory" as you quoted it, could very well be wrong, thou my memory of it IS as real to me, as anything you "think" you remember as reality to you... Or... It could be, "close minded people" like you, don't have the ability to maintain memories of our previous timeline ...

I just don't know anymore.

I guess there really are people who think that they are right about their memory, that things have really changed, and that the rest of the world is wrong.

As Bram Kaandorp has just said, these people really do think that the "timeline" has changed, and yet somehow they have retained a memory of the way the world was before the change.

They are intrigued to find themselves in a science fictional Dickian altered reality for real, and since they are the only ones aware of the cosmic shift, they are perforce cast in the role of hero.

Now they are trying to band together with the select few other heroes, either to gain succour from like-minded community, or in order to move on to the next stage of resisting, forming a band of brothers in order to … find out who has hijacked reality, so they can bring down the forces of alteration and restore the one true timeline? Or whatever.

So, they don't really want anything from you. They are still searching for fellow travellers, and stumbling towards the noble battle that must surely come? Or perhaps they fancy themselves like a super private eye, picking up the thread of mystery?

Whatever. Some of them are scamsters looking to milk the gullible, of course, and they are hoping to string you along towards some sort of payoff for themselves. But the rest are just looking for a way out of their mundane lives with some real live action. Or mentally ill. Or they've never realised that science fiction is more fun if you read books instead of role-playing a half-baked fantasy.

It seems to me that the Mandela Effect is a form of solipsism; one is so uncertain that they can trust the reality around them, that they prefer an outlandish explanation over accepting that their memory is wrong. One prefers what one "knows" over the facts, somewhat like religious belief.

You see this with some chemtrailers who insist that they remember that when were younger, before the spraying started in the 1990s, that skies were bluer, the clouds didn't take on the weird forms they do since and that there were no persistent contrails in the sky.

When irrefutable evidence of this is presented, some truly outlandish ideas are entertained to deny it. Copies of old movies have been removed from all archives and replaced with versions with digitally inserted contrails. Books and magazines about meteorology and cloudspotting that show and explain the contrails and clouds they insist didn't exist then are modern creations inserted into libraries, second hand bookshops, eBay, online archives, etc.

Anything but admit the obvious that their memories are fallible and incorrect and prone to being reinforced by the very belief they're trying to use it as evidence of.

As Bram Kaandorp has just said, these people really do think that the "timeline" has changed, and yet somehow they have retained a memory of the way the world was before the change.

They are intrigued to find themselves in a science fictional Dickian altered reality for real, and since they are the only ones aware of the cosmic shift, they are perforce cast in the role of hero.

Now they are trying to band together with the select few other heroes, either to gain succour from like-minded community, or in order to move on to the next stage of resisting, forming a band of brothers in order to … find out who has hijacked reality, so they can bring down the forces of alteration and restore the one true timeline? Or whatever.

So, they don't really want anything from you. They are still searching for fellow travellers, and stumbling towards the noble battle that must surely come? Or perhaps they fancy themselves like a super private eye, picking up the thread of mystery?

Whatever. Some of them are scamsters looking to milk the gullible, of course, and they are hoping to string you along towards some sort of payoff for themselves. But the rest are just looking for a way out of their mundane lives with some real live action. Or mentally ill. Or they've never realised that science fiction is more fun if you read books instead of role-playing a half-baked fantasy.

/thread

__________________"I'm 'willing to admit' any fact that can be shown to be evidential and certain." -- Vortigern99

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." -- Jimi Hendrix

I watched a few YouTube videos on the Mandela effect before I decided they were just plain stupid. The best one was someone claiming that the "Brady Bunch Variety Hour" (the one with "Fake Jan") was proof of the effect because it's just too silly to have been a real thing.

I think I'll have to agree with that one, even though the phenomenon does still intrigue me.

I agree, but on a different level of interest. I'd love to see just when it went from people discussing a "name" or "tag" for a phenomenon that, as we've mentioned, most of us were fairly familiar with to Woo Central. When it originally came up, it was just an attempt to tag something with hip new name, I feel.

Any trivia fan could've named several of them.... We all know that "Play it again, Sam" never shows up in Casablanca. Ditto the mis-remembering of the closing of Gone With the Wind, or even the Darth Vader line. Yeah, they're all popular films but most people don't see them more than three or four times in their lives. The claim that you can "positively" remember something you heard thirty years ago just flies in the face of all evidence, particularly when you've seen thirty skit actors, nineteen mimics, your Uncle Lou, Rich Little and Frank Gorshin all misquoting the lines.

My interest is when that went from "Yeah, that's interesting" to "Wow, you're right, man. They're manipulating the matrix to make us believe that Bogey never said "Play it again, Sam".

Why? Something as complicated and expensive as the matrix and they're using it to trick us into a respellng of Berenstein? To what end? If I meet someone with the earlier use of "The Mandela Effect", I'll be happy to explain to them the stuff they can find showing just how fallible human memory is and how it can be manipulated. If I encounter someone who thinks that this sort of stuff is an indication of a warp in the matrix, messages from an alternate and/or parallel universe or memories from our past lives? I guess I'll just move away from them on the park bench like I did with the lady who wanted my advice on whether she should use opaque jars or clear ones to capture moonbeams.

__________________Ha! Foolmewunz has just been added to the list of people who aren't complete idiots. Hokulele

It's not that liberals have become less tolerant. It's that conservatives have become more intolerable.

I am certain it was the Berenstein bears - this universe even smells funny.

Me too, and I'm pretty certain they were one of the original 14 NFL franchises.

Dave

__________________Me: So what you're saying is that, if the load carrying ability of the lower structure is reduced to the point where it can no longer support the load above it, it will collapse without a jolt, right?

I agree, but on a different level of interest. I'd love to see just when it went from people discussing a "name" or "tag" for a phenomenon that, as we've mentioned, most of us were fairly familiar with to Woo Central. When it originally came up, it was just an attempt to tag something with hip new name, I feel.

Any trivia fan could've named several of them.... We all know that "Play it again, Sam" never shows up in Casablanca. Ditto the mis-remembering of the closing of Gone With the Wind, or even the Darth Vader line. Yeah, they're all popular films but most people don't see them more than three or four times in their lives. The claim that you can "positively" remember something you heard thirty years ago just flies in the face of all evidence, particularly when you've seen thirty skit actors, nineteen mimics, your Uncle Lou, Rich Little and Frank Gorshin all misquoting the lines.

My interest is when that went from "Yeah, that's interesting" to "Wow, you're right, man. They're manipulating the matrix to make us believe that Bogey never said "Play it again, Sam".

Why? Something as complicated and expensive as the matrix and they're using it to trick us into a respellng of Berenstein? To what end? If I meet someone with the earlier use of "The Mandela Effect", I'll be happy to explain to them the stuff they can find showing just how fallible human memory is and how it can be manipulated. If I encounter someone who thinks that this sort of stuff is an indication of a warp in the matrix, messages from an alternate and/or parallel universe or memories from our past lives? I guess I'll just move away from them on the park bench like I did with the lady who wanted my advice on whether she should use opaque jars or clear ones to capture moonbeams.

I'm allowing that your instincts about strangers you meet may be better refined than many, as you are an open-minded and well-traveled man, thus experienced in strange encounters, but: such a woman may have been opening a gambit of playful poetic mystique with a dashing young man sharing a bench with her in the park! You'll never know if that could have been the start of a lovely day of adventuring with her, now, will ya!?